St. Louis Maroons
The St. Louis Maroons debuted on April 20, 1884, at the
Union Base Ball Park, defeating
Chicago Browns, 7–2.
Henry Lucas, the founder and president of the Union Association and owner of the Maroons, had stocked his team with most of the league's best talent. They started the season 20–0, a mark that would not be topped in major American professional sports until the
Golden State Warriors of the
NBA surpassed it 131 years later
in the 2015–16 season. The mark has never been surpassed in
Major League Baseball, with the closest teams being the
1982 Atlanta Braves, the
1987 Milwaukee Brewers, and the
2023 Tampa Bay Rays (who all started the season 13–0). The Maroons went 94–19 in that season, with their closest rivals, the
Cincinnati Outlaw Reds, finishing 21 games behind. For comparison, the Maroons' record would project to 135–27 under the modern schedule of 162 games, while Pythagorean expectation based on the Maroons' results (887 runs scored, 429 runs allowed) and a 162-game schedule would translate to a record of 132–30, but these results are of questionable merit, and serve to indicate something of the quality of the remainder of the organization, which many derided as the "Onion League". One of the Maroons' major stars was pitcher
Charlie Sweeney, best known today as the pitcher who left
Old Hoss Radbourn to shoulder the pitching burden alone with the
Providence Grays of the
National League. Radbourn went on to pitch most of the rest of the Providence club's games, winning an MLB record total of 60. Sweeney won 24 with the Maroons after having already won 17 with the Grays, so he had a fair year as well. After the Union Association collapsed, the
National League was persuaded to bring the St. Louis Union entry into the established league, to try to provide some competition for the
St. Louis Browns of the
American Association. Unfortunately for the Maroons, the Browns were at the peak of their game, winning pennants four straight years (1885–1888). Meanwhile, the Maroons, facing much better competition in the National League, finished well off the National League pace in 1885 and 1886, not gaining anything in the latter season from new uniforms sporting large black diamonds on the chest.
Fred Dunlap hit for the cycle for the Maroons on May 24, 1886. Following the 1886 season, the team was sold to the league, which in turn sold it to
John T. Brush. He moved the team to
Indianapolis, where they were renamed the
Hoosiers. Brush owned the stadium in Indianapolis, which had been previously used by the previous Hoosier team. ==Indianapolis Hoosiers==